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NammalvarNammalvar was a Hindu bhakti saint, well-known for his many poems about devotion to Vishnu. He is thought to have been born around 880, in what is now Alvartirunakari, Tamilnadu, and to have died around 930. According to tradition, as a child he responded to no external stimuli and his parents left him at the feet of statue of Vishnu. The child then got up and climbed into a hole in a tamarind tree, sat in the lotus position, and began to meditate. A poet and scholar in North India named Maturakavi saw a bright light shining to the south, and followed it until he reached Nammalvar's tree. Unable to elict any reaction from the child, he asked him a riddle: "If the subtle is embodied in the gross, what will it eat, where will it rest?" Nammalvar broke his lifelong silence and responded, "That it will eat, and there it will rest!" Maturakavi realized the holiness of this child yogi, who then composed on the spot a thousand hymns praising Vishnu, each one starting with the last word of the previous poem. Maturkavi became the child's student and went on to compose poems about his prodigal master. Nammalvar's thousand devotional poems are collected in the Tiruvaymoli. His name means "our own alvar" (alvar means "one immersed in God"; it is a title for devotional saints), and he was also known as Maran and Catakopan. (Info from the introduction to Hymns for the Drowning: Poems for Visnu by Nammalvar, translated by A. K. Ramanujan.)
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